So, you've reached the stage where inbound marketing looks to be the best fit for your business. Now, it's time to decide between setting up your own in-house team or hiring an agency. While you might be drawn towards getting an in-house team, first have a look at these reasons why you should hire an inbound marketing agency instead.

If you're new to inbound marketing, you may not have the experience to confidently and correctly execute an inbound plan. If you're hoping to get your new marketing strategy implemented straight away, it's crucial you have assistance from a team who know what they're doing and can create solid foundations for your business' marketing.

It takes more time and costs more to hire an agency later to help correct any errors that were made.

2. You have immediate access to many specialties

Hiring an in-house team can be very expensive when you consider what skills and specialities you want your new employees to have. When looking at your proposed inbound strategy, you may require quite a few people to ensure each stage of your plan is effectively carried out.

When it comes to inbound, you will need staff who have experience in: workflow automation, persona creation, campaign strategy and most importantly, they will need to be trained to use your inbound software.

Even if you're lucky to find one person who has excellent skills and experience in all those areas, they won't have the time to manage it themselves.

With an agency, each person has their own specialities and you get immediate access to all their different skills and experience.

At Digital 22 we're proud of the expertise we can provide to our clients:

Persona Creation

Blogging

Workflow Automation

Calls To Action

Landing Pages

Database Segmentation

Campaign Management

The Buyers Journey

Campaign Recovery

Content Creation

We have plenty of certificates to show we're an experienced team:

3. Hit the ground faster

If you decided to hire a person or build your own in-house team it can take up to six months to get your team trained on the software and methodology. You need them to understand the inbound methodology before they can start creating and enforcing your marketing strategy, otherwise your marketing will struggle to achieve a positive impact.

Agencies are trained to help businesses get their inbound strategies up and running quickly. After all, you're hiring an agency and they want to start showing you results as soon as possible.

Having an inbound agency on your side means they're already familiar with what goals you will want to achieve and be able to quickly create a strategy to help you achieve them.

4. Saves you money

Hiring the services of an inbound marketing agency is cheaper than hiring a new in-house team. As mentioned before, with an agency you get access to a mix of different skills and experience. With an in-house team, you're restricted on what skills they have and it costs time and money, waiting for them to attend relevant training courses.

In the long run, you save money by getting the specific expertise you need when you need it.

5. Saves office space

Another benefit of an agency is that you don't have to furnish new office space for your inbound team because an agency will already have their own office to work from.

You may argue that one of the benefits of an in-house team is just a few steps away but an agency is still reachable by phone and email. At Digital 22, we regularly visit our clients and have conference calls so they're always in the loop.

6. Helps you set up realistic targets

By getting an inbound agency from the start, they can help you create realistic targets. It's important to remember, inbound marketing is a long-term marketing strategy and especially at the beginning, it takes time to attract new visitors and convert them.

Screenshot of a B2B client's HubSpot Marketing Dashboard

Creating unrealistic goals will make you feel like you're underachieving and will risk the chance of you jumping ship before the real results start to come in. As with any inbound strategy, we believe it takes about six months for you to start making a real impact and seeing genuine results.

7. Agencies can provide objective feedback

Being the director or manager in a company can make it difficult to objectively assess your marketing. We've all been there: you get a great idea, implement it and then realise it's not giving you the results you expected. In some cases, people try to fix the idea and struggle to realise that they need to let it go and try something new.

Working with an agency means you're working with a team who has experience working on inbound marketing strategies for other businesses. They are also looking at your business with a different perspective, they can determine what is and isn't working.

Getting stuck with ideas that don't work or are actually causing more harm to your business is dangerous for your company's growth. An agency is an external team who can approach your business from the outside and help you make the hard decisions.

8. Achieve the best out of your software

To get the best out of any new software or equipment, it takes time to read and understand all the instructions. It's just like buying a new washing machine - do you actually know what all the settings do?

There are many different stages of an inbound strategy and to get the best results, it's crucial you use all the features of your inbound marketing software.

HubSpot is the recommended inbound software for businesses. HubSpot's founders are two of the greatest thought leaders in inbound marketing so you can rely on the fact HubSpot ticks all the boxes when it comes to features and tools you'll need.

As a Platinum HubSpot agency, we use HubSpot everyday. When you're paying for new software, it's obvious you want to get the best out of it and get your money's worth. With a trained agency, you can be confident everything you're paying for is being used.

9. They already have the tools and resources

Along with getting the best out of your inbound marketing software, agencies will have access to lots of other tools and software which they use on a daily basis. These are SEO, PPC, Content, Design and many other kinds.

If you're working with an agency, they will automatically use these tools to help you get the best results - so, in the end your marketing strategy is benefiting from premium tools without you having to pay for them.

10. To have an effective strategy, you need a full-time inbound marketing team

If you were hoping to increase the capacity of your current marketing team and train them about inbound marketing, then you could be looking at a disaster waiting to happen. In theory, it sounds great asking your own marketing team to carry out your inbound strategy but if they're new to the concept and/or they've already got a high workload, they may struggle to carry out your inbound plan. Or your outbound advertising efforts may take a hit.

An effective inbound marketing strategy requires a lot of legwork to get started and then it needs staff who can dedicate their entire attention to it.

Remember, the success of an inbound plan depends on being able to attract new visitors, convert them into contacts and then nurture them to becoming customers. If you're unable to provide your full attention to your ideal buyer personas, you're going to struggle to achieve your objectives.

An inbound marketing agency has a team ready and available to carry out your strategy and make it as effective as possible.

Who are Digital 22?

We're a Platinum inbound marketing agency who has experience working with a fantastic range of businesses (B2B and B2C). Over the last couple of years, we've been growing, fast, and we're working with companies in the UK, Europe and the US.

We're a creative bunch of individuals and we've worked with brand new businesses and those that have been around for years but are searching for a new and modern approach to marketing (i.e. inbound marketing).

Unlike some agencies that have a habit of subcontracting work to other agencies, we don't. All our work is done in-house.

With all our clients, we invite them to access our project management system so they can see everything we do. We understand you might be wary of an agency because you can't see what they're working on. But with our way, you can easily keep-up-to-date with what we're doing.

We could be a match made in inbound heaven

As inbound marketers, we're very passionate about what we do. We've seen new businesses take on inbound marketing as their primary strategy and we've witnessed their businesses grow in size and revenue. We want to work with companies that are looking to grow and are willing to incorporate inbound marketing into their strategies.

If this is something that you're interested in, why not book a free 30 minute call with us?

Convince your Boss

If you need to run it by your boss first, we’ve prepared some information to lend a hand. Click below to download a pre-written proposal to win the support you need to work with aPlatinum Inbound Marketing Agency.